Simone Biles + the battle of the "twisties"

We are now a week into the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, and arguably one of the biggest stories of the week is that Simone Biles withdrew from the women’s artistic gymnastics team finals after vault. I was watching the competition live and knew immediately something was wrong with her vault. (I woke up at 4:30 am for it and yes, I am hating myself for it now after doing it twice, but I did not want to miss seeing the competitions live and having to deal with the NBC prime time coverage!)

Simone looked to me like she had no idea where she was in the air. It looked like she floated for too long before twisting, and then didn’t complete the full 2.5 twist she was supposed to do and instead ended her vault after 1.5 twists. The vault she was supposed to do is so easy for her that I swear she can do it in her sleep, so to see her mess that up (and mess up an “easier” 1.5 vault) meant something was really wrong. If you look at slo-mo photos (check out this composite image via The NY Times) , you can tell that she doesn’t realize where she is in the air the whole time, even when her body hits the ground. Thank god for her muscle memory, because that could have been catastrophic had she not landed on her feet. The margin for error was EXTREMELY SLIM. I cannot emphasize that enough.

The “Twisties” in Gymnastics

Originally it was reported that Simone withdrew for mental health reasons. Later it came out that she had the “twisties,” which is a condition not unlike the “yips” in other sports (which I also just learned about this week). The twisties can be caused by mental health struggles and stress. We know Simone was feeling the pressure from the whole world. The twisties can definitely also affect your mental health; it’s a mental block.

The twisties are basically a loss of air awareness and leads you to not trust your body because your brain is telling it to do one thing and your body is doing another. Your body becomes uncontrollable. In gymnastics, performing any flight skills (twisting or not) when you don’t have air awareness can lead to serious injury or even death. The skills don’t even have to be that difficult, and we all know Simone’s skills are some of the hardest in the world.

I’ve been engrossed in learning all I can about the twisties, which is a phenomenon I had never heard about until now. I never heard it mentioned in all my years of following college gymnastics, and yet, it seems like almost every gymnast is affected by it at some point in their career. Once I better understood what was going on, I wanted to immediately wrap Simone in bubble wrap. I’m so happy she had the awareness to pull out of the competition when she did, and that her coaches let her do what was best for her and her health. Had she competed the other events, she could have injured herself or worse, and that also may have resulted in the US team not medaling at all. She did what was best for herself and for her team and for that, I commend her!

If you’re interested in learning more about the twisties in gymnastics, here are some helpful resources:

Kimi, Cotton Cashmere Cat HairgymnasticsComment